king' s outdoor world - Index

king' s outdoor world - Hunting Illustrated - October/November 2007 - Index

www.whispercreekarchery.com
Tell me a little about the history of
Whisper Creek Archery.
The best place to start Whisper
Creek's history is probably with my
own background in archery. I have
been making archery components and
doing archery design work for about
twenty years now. We were Browning
Archery's primary injection molding
company. We did a lot of work for
Browning and some other companies
in the industry, so we had already
established a lot of archery contacts
and associations prior to the formation
of Whisper Creek. That is actually
how I met the original inventor, Andy
Andrews, whom I partnered up with
in 2004. After Andy and I partnered
up, we worked hard on developing
the suspension system, which we call
the Axle Suspension System.
How did these ideas come about,
that one day you decided to put
together a bow?
Andy is a brilliant engineer, but didn't
have any manufacturing capabilities.
In 2004, I went to the ATA shows
as a vendor and Andy and I got to
talking. Andy had some great ideas
and, after the show, Andy called me.
Whisper Creek Archery
Jeff Nish: CEO
He had realized that he was never going
to get his ideas off the ground unless he
found someone to do the manufacturing.
Through a series of deals, we decided to
team up. Andy lives in Tennessee and
I live in Utah. We started doing all of
the manufacturing in Utah and we were
shuttling Andy back and forth to help with
the design work. Andy has a high-level
job at Duracell. In 2006, it got to be a
real hardship for Andy to keep everything
going. I ended up buying Andy out and,
at the same time, merged with Milltree
Outdoors from Ohio. This gave us some
strength in the financial area and gave us
some resources we were lacking in sales
and marketing. The merge also gave us
a bigger team of business analysts that
could look at the market and say, "These
are the sectors we need to go after.? This
is a very highly competitive business
and not for the weak of heart. This is
a family operation. My son Jonathon
is Vice President and my wife runs the
administrative side for the manufacturing
facility. We work long and hard hours for
our customers.
What makes a Whisper Creek bow
different than the competition's bows?
What makes our bows different from
any other bow on the market is that we
have decoupled the axle away from the
limb on our pro series. On a bow, all of
the strength vibration and all of the cam
oscillation has to transfer through the
axle. Whisper Creek is the only company
that has a suspension system that the axle
rides in. We try to equate it to a fourwheel
drive truck and an independent
suspension. We have a bushing inside
our axle system that is isolated inside a
special bow jam material that we have
92 HUNTING ILLUSTRATED.com
corporate
5INTERVIEW5
David King
CORP. INTERVIEW
developed. So, the vibration now
has to travel through that bow jam
material in order to get to the limb,
which gets to the riser and which gets
to your hand.
What our company is really
about is vibration technology. There
are a lot of vibration after-market
companies out there. Bolt on this, bolt
on that. We are a bow company that's
known for attacking at the source and
dealing with vibration on the bow, in
our system.
We have technology that
we have not released to the market
yet. When Whisper Creek first
began, we did what many small
companies do; we tried to move in
too fast. We ended up putting too
much technology on the market at
one time and it was overwhelming to
the market. We were so radical. Our
look was so radical. Our dealers were
afraid that they might not be able to
sell our product. Then Bowtech put
the Guardian out there which made
us look mainstream. All of a sudden,
the market began to change. People
were willing to say, "Hey, that does
look different. But, wow, feel how it
shoots.? Bowhunters are now looking
for more technology, looking for more
speed. If there is one thing Whisper
Creek has done, it is to open people's
eyes that sound makes a difference.
We were the first company to ever
publish decibel ratings. At the time,
everyone was concentrating on speed
and how fast their bows were. Now,
just about every company publishes
decibel ratings. We forced the issue
that it is not all about speed. It is
about how quiet that bow is. When
does the animal hear the release? We